Fagg has heard them all, and that’s just a smattering of the not-so-smooth talk that has sailed across bars.

And it’s not just from men to women. There are doozies on the other side of the gender line.

Joey Dessell and Joe York hear them all the time at the cell-phone store where they work in Illinois’ White Oaks Mall.
“A girl came in one day and asked, ‘Do you ever go home with anyone you meet from here?’” Dessell says. “I said, ‘No,’ and her response was, ‘Do you wanna start?’”

“What was that one that lady used on me about cell phones? Oh yeah: ‘You wanna push my buttons?’” York says with a hearty laugh.

And yet, it could always be worse.

“I’ve had a couple of guys just ask me to go home with them,” says Nicole Baer, who’s tended bar at Stella Blue since last July. “At that point, it’s usually last call, so all you can really do is look at your watch and ignore them, you know?”
If you ask Jenny Carter, a bartender at Catch 22, that’s typical in a town where men have game … where they shoot eight over par.

“I don’t think guys in Springfield are that creative,” says Carter, who’s heard more groaners than grabbers at the bar over the last eight months. “I’ve had people sign tabs and leave their phone number. It’s really nothing that innovative. I’ve figured out that a bar is not really the place to meet people.

“It’s usually the same old stuff like, ‘Haven’t I seen you here before?’”

Ah, but one Valentino’s — or Valentina’s — trash is another one’s treasure. Fagg’s No. 1 and No. 2 pickup lines: “Do I know you from somewhere?” or “Did I go to school with you?”

“Usually, that’s what I say to pick up a guy, and it’s worked,” Fagg says. “But when a guy uses something like that on me, I can just tell when he’s lying. When they say, ‘You look just like a girl I know,’ it’s just not that personal.”

“I think I’d never talk to a guy who used something like (a cheesy pickup line) on me,” says Natalie Burch of Springfield. “In fact, I’d probably laugh at him.”

Hopefully you’ve never said anything like this with serious intent: “Is that a mirror in your pants, because I can see myself in them?” It’s both a line that Penny Ryan of Springfield has heard, and the one voted the worst ever in a 2006 online Budweiser poll.

“I’ve never ever really used one, and I would think just a compliment would work,” says Ryan, for whom the art of the pickup long has been a spectator sport. She’s been married more than 10 years.

Perhaps gracefully saying something nice about someone’s appearance is the way to go. But it’s best to be specific.

“A lot of guys just say, ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful.’ Well, when you’re wasted, of course that’s what you want to hear,” Baer says.

Scientific studies of pick-up lines are popular, but Fagg’s friend, Mark Hardy echoes the most popular sentiment on what works best to woo and wow.

“One of the first things you do is say ‘Hi’ and introduce yourself,” says Hardy of Springfield. “I’m not a pick-up line guy. I wouldn’t know it even if I were using one.”

Nick Rogers can be reached at 747-9587. Read his blog at blogs.sj-r.com/unpaintedhuffhines.